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Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

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Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#341

Post by drpixie »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #336
danuker wrote: post #81

LibreOffice FTW. https://libreoffice.org/ It may be glitchy in some areas, but I've been using it since graduating high school, and I can do whatever I want with it.

I used libre office for years, but I switched for 2 reasons. 1: the export to docx had problems, and most publications require your submissions to be in docx format; 2: it gets laggy with large documents. This lag becomes distracting when writing novels. Seems to start around page 20-50 and gets worse and worse as you go. I wish I had better alternatives to suggest. I wish that publishers would stop demanding we subm…

I hadn't noticed LibreOffice lags any worse than MS-office. But, if you haven't tried, for anything bigger than a chapter or so, do yourself a favour and try a "proper" typesetting system - LaTeX, SILE, or the like.

There will be a learning curve but I find my attention stays on the content, as I'm not continually distracted by the format issues that are better delayed until the text is complete.

You'll want a reasonable text editor with spell checker, preferably one that knows to ignore formatting commands. Note you will end up with PDF output - if you really have to submit docx, my condolences!

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#342

Post by technick »

M95D wrote: post #232
smarkov wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Windows, check out simplewall, it does (almost) exactly that. https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall

It uses the windows firewall. Do I trust Windows firewall to block itself? NO!

I'm using malwarebytes windows firewall control and it does block itself. I'm constantly dealing with Windows 10 crying over defender not being able to update itself and popups that I may have a virus that is blocking defender from calling home.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#343

Post by technick »

autoexec wrote: post #314
ziml77 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it was a wrapper over Windows Firewall, why would that make you trust the filtering less? Like even if it was running fully custom ring 0 code, there's still also Windows kernel code running at the same level. Microsoft could make the kernel interfere however they want.

Like how MS ignored the hosts file if you tried to use it to block windows update. Ultimately MS has final say on what you're allowed to do on windows and they can force updates that disable or enable any kind of behavior they want. It's their system. If you don't trust MS, don't use windows or at least never ever let connect to the internet. In a fight between you wanting to keep your privacy and an OS designed and…

I'm to the point of getting a separate hardware firewall and putting that between my computer and home network. But when you do that, you won't be able to tie activity back to an application... maybe the new nextgen firewalls can if you install some sort of agent on the computer? Idk....

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#344

Post by q-big »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #172
eastbound wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, Atlassian’s stock lost 66% of its value, and it could be because investors notice that converting people to the Cloud is not currently working. Atlassian should have better bet on their Server solutions, but they really really wanted to be a cloud operator. “For strategic reasons.” Maybe for governmental reasons, who knows.

It's a contentious issue in AppSec where most vendors want you to upload source code to their cloud for anything other than the most basic of scans. There are SLAs for how long the vendors can retain the source code they scan, but many clients are not aware of how much of these scans are performed manually behind the scenes by humans and how few of the vendors have their compliance audited. The possibility of a vendo…

> It's a contentious issue in AppSec where most vendors want you to upload source code to their cloud for anything other than the most basic of scans.

Write the source code in some Assembler language (or even binary code ;-) ). Or use some obscure programming language that the vendor cannot scan, thus having a reason not to upload it.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#345

Post by q-big »

squarefoot wrote: post #164
danuker wrote: post #81

LibreOffice FTW. https://libreoffice.org/ It may be glitchy in some areas, but I've been using it since graduating high school, and I can do whatever I want with it.

This. I've installed Linux+LO for years to a lot of people (also a couple times when it was in the earlier StarOffice incarnation, can't recall if under Windows or OS/2, certainly not Linux), being extremely clear on one thing: "this is not Microsoft Office, it's not as powerful as Microsoft Office and you may find some incompatibilities here and there (that was true especially during the old times), but the features…

> but the features 99% of users need are all here.

I cannot believe this, in particular for the comparison Excel vs. LibreOfice Calc: the latter is used insanely actively in the finance and insurance industries, thus any proper user sampling should bias towards these industries. On the other hand: users in these industries know Excel really well and use very advanced features of it.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#346

Post by nokya »

Microsoft and confidentiality of your data are two incompatible concepts.

Microsoft is basically the editor of a set of tools designed to make employees more productive. As long as you use Microsoft products with this in mind, there's no ambiguity: you give Microsoft the data you work on, and it gives you productivity in return.

Unless you are the actual CEO of a company involved in trade secrets (or a defense organization), you shouldn't care about Microsoft snitching the content of your slides, and everything else you write or see, to its own servers on the justification that it will make your experience better.

It's not worth entering the debate, and if you accuse Microsoft you will probably need to accuse its competitors.

Just remember to keep out of anything Microsoft when you process anything strictly personal, and you will be more than fine.

P.s.: I almost forgot to answer your question. Yes, you approved this. And again, if it's not your company, your boss very likely approved it and wouldn't even consider the effort of looking into this, so it's not your business. Literally.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#347

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

squarefoot wrote: post #264
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second OpenSnitch, I haven't face any shutdowns due to it yet. For those coming from LittleSnitch on macOS might have to look into the finer details of the connection in the Allow/Deny dialog on OS to get the best results.

Slowdowns, not shutdowns, luckily:) The desktop (XFCE under Debian if that helps) just hung for a while like it was waiting for me to allow some rules, but didn't show the requester to do so, also the timings were random, could have been from 2 seconds to 5 or more.

Oops; Self-reminder to not comment on HN when half sleep.

But, I haven't noticed slowdown either; I wonder whether its because I always keep the OS window open?

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#348

Post by RileyJames »

user3939382 wrote: post #64

What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…

Cool idea. This was posted a few days ago on here, and I was impressed by the UX and capabilities. Tho I didn’t delve too deep.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33481518

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#349

Post by Semaphor »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #319
Semaphor wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you used the Designer feature? Yes. > If you’re on a work account, your admin may have enabled or disabled it already with GPO/MDM. It has to be a global Office 365 setting, my computer is not in the domain, I’m the only admin for it. That’s why I’m asking where the setting for the permission is, so I can have a look at it (I’m secondary admin for the O365 account) and potentially disable it.

Do you have Microsoft 365? It's a requirement for the feature. It's part of "connected experiences" so this is the article on GPO: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/privacy/manag... On a Mac, one thing to note is: > If the user has an Office 365 (or Microsoft 365) subscription and is signed in with a work or school account, or if the user has Office LTSC Standard for Mac 2021 or Office Standard 2019 for…

No, no M365, only O365. And again, no group policies.

And M365 is not a requirement because the Designer function clearly works on my machine.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#350

Post by Tozen »

It's not just PowerPoint, but other Microsoft products too. Their browser (Edge) is known for being on constant phone home, close doesn't really mean close, self-update without user interaction, odd settings that cause privacy problems, after it updates itself makes changes to settings without user permissions or breaking various security-related extensions, etc...

It's a pattern of general disrespect for user privacy and exploitation of unaware users for corporate and 3rd party entity benefit. Look no further than Microsoft's Copilot, which is in the spotlight, and arguably has no respect for users copyright.

That PowerPoint (and other Office products) are phoning home users data, should be of no surprise whatsoever.

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